I want to expand a bit on Alex’s answer and see if I can answer why we respond with “maybe” to most requests for clarification since I usually handle most of the inquiries as well as to why we have been so resistant to providing hard examples.
Now before I begin I think it is important for me to define that most devs that contact me directly are less looking for clarification and are instead looking for an answer to if X idea will work. While I do get a few that do ask for legitimate clarification, in the case outlined above, about 9 times out of 10 it is asking if an idea will work. With that established I can move onto the explanation.
The reason for us having to respond “maybe” to most devs asking that question is there is a difference between the concept and the implementation of the said concept. You see, a concept can comply with the theme/card on paper, but may have been implemented in such a way that it no longer lines up with the theme/card. This can happen to any concept, but is especially true for ideas that ride the line which tend to make up the majority of the questions we answer directly.
In short, since it is so highly dependent on how the idea is executed we can only reliably respond to questions like that with “no” or “maybe” with maybe meaning we see at least one possible way the idea could be implemented that would comply with the theme/card.
This is true to some extent. We are restricted in the type and detail of feedback we can give directly to devs in order to keep things fair. Due to this, we can only really explain things at a very high level, which is another reason we want to limit our influence.
It is really easy to unintentionally send a dev down a bad path since we are really limited on what we can say to them. This is not the only reason as to why we want to limit our influence but I will get a bit more into that in the next answer.
We understand this, but dont quite want to list specific examples as we don’t want to risk poisoning the well, per se.
The point of the cards is to encourage devs to push themselves as well as encourage lateral thinking. We feel if we where to provide some examples it would at best narrow what devs think they can do with the cards and at worst encourage devs to either copy or try to adapt the example in some manner.
Also, the wild cards are considered challenges end of the day and providing examples we feel would cheapen that fact.
The thing to keep in mind is there is no hard answer we are judging these cards by. We judge primarily on what is written on the card so as long as we feel the solution in question complies with the letter of the card the dev will still get points for it.
So in short the solution does not need to be correct, per se, but just “technically” correct.
